The present invention relates to devices particularly for use in child feeding, although they may be used for feeding other individuals where the spilling of food is highly likely.
The spilling of food in the feeding of small children is a commonplace occurrence. The training of children to eat in a manner consistent with normal adult eating styles can be an exasperating experience and can require months and even years of clean up of significant spilled food and liquids, making the aftermath of a child's eating experience unpleasant and time consuming. Many devices, including bibs, have been styled to minimize the clean up required after child feeding, attesting to the desirability of overcoming this problem. The present invention effectively solves this problem, making the clean up experience relatively effortless.
A foldable lap tray is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,671,479 and provides for a single device to cover part of the chest and lap of a user. However, this device does not deal with and is not capable of solving the above-mentioned problem in connection with the spilling of food and liquids in the training of children or other users who are incapable of managing the eating experience in a normal adult fashion.
A bib-bowl arrangement is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,860,381, which attempts to solve this problem by suggesting a bib which is contoured to allow food spillage to slide back into a user bowl. Unfortunately, this allows the backwashed and spilled food to go back into the bowl to be re-eaten and does not provide a means for separately capturing and segregating the waste food from the food being fed to the child.
A further bib-tray structure for use during infant feeding is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,199. This device is an integral bib and tray arrangement but does not provide any means for catching spilled food independently of the tray. In this device, much of the spilled food falls back into the tray, resulting in an unpalatable situation.
Other similar arrangements are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,108,557, as well as U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,062,558, and, 5,642,674.